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Author: Sarah A. Sutherland*
Journal: Lex Electronica
Publication date: January 2026
Volume 21, Number 1
Pages 1-20
Online: https://www.lex-electronica.org/s/3644
Abstract
Statistics Canada carried out The Canadian Legal Problems Survey in 2021 and released the public use microdata file in 2022, which allows for granular analysis of the responses. This data set provides the means to derive significant insights into Canadians’ experiences with legal problems and disputes across the country. One particularly interesting finding is that Quebecers were 18% less likely to report experiencing serious legal problems than Canadians outside Quebec. This essay reports on this finding and how much this difference correlates with attributes of Quebec society and governance compared to other regions in Canada in an attempt to identify any simple explanations of why this may be the case. Examining the prevalence of legal problems in Quebec shows that most categories of issues are less common than the regional average. This difference is particularly strong for problems associated with accessing government services, debt, and wills. In contrast, Quebecers are more likely to report experiencing problems related to harassment, family law, and consumer law. The influence of the Quebec Civil Law likely affects some of these issues, but it is not possible to draw a clear correlation between problems that fall under provincial and federal law in the survey results to attempt to quantify this difference. An examination of how Francophone and Anglophone survey participants reported their experiences does not explain this effect either. These findings indicate that further research into the causes of these differences is indicated to identify ways to consolidate these benefits in Quebec and provide policy guidance to help other jurisdictions.
Keywords
Legal Problems, Statistical Analysis, Comparative Law, Access to Justice, Demography
Résumé
Menée en 2021 par Statistique Canada, l’Enquête canadienne sur les problèmes juridiques a donné lieu, en 2022, à la publication d’un fichier de microdonnées, rendant possible une analyse granulaire des réponses. Cet ensemble de données met en lumière des observations importantes sur les expériences vécues par la population canadienne relativement aux problèmes et conflits juridiques à travers le pays. Il en ressort un constat intéressant selon lequel la population québécoise est 18 % moins susceptible de rapporter avoir vécu des problèmes juridiques que les Canadiens hors Québec. Cet essai souligne ce constat et examine à quel point cette différence est en corrélation avec les caractéristiques propres au Québec et à ses institutions, comparativement au reste du pays, et ce, dans le but d’en dégager des explications simples. L’examen de la prévalence des problèmes juridiques au Québec démontre que la plupart des catégories d’enjeux y sont moins fréquentes que dans le reste du pays. Cette différence se démarque particulièrement pour les questions liées à l’accès aux services gouvernementaux, aux dettes et aux testaments. À l’inverse, la population québécoise s’avère plus susceptible de signaler des problèmes liés au harcèlement, au droit familial et à la consommation. Il est fort possible que le droit civil québécois influence certains de ces enjeux, mais aucune corrélation claire n’est établie entre les problèmes relevant du droit provincial et ceux relevant du droit fédéral dans les résultats du sondage afin de tenter de quantifier cette différence. Par ailleurs, une analyse de la manière dont les francophones et les anglophones rapportent leurs expériences passées n’explique pas cet écart. Ces constats suggèrent qu’une recherche plus approfondie est pertinente afin de mieux comprendre les raisons de ces différences, de consolider les avantages observés au Québec et d’orienter les politiques publiques ailleurs au pays.
Mots clés
Problèmes juridiques, Analyse statistique, Droit comparé, Accès à la justice, Démographie
* PhD student, Edinburgh Law School, University of Edinburgh. The author is grateful for a funding grant to support this research from le Fonds d’études notariales from the Chambre des notaires du Québec, and to Régine Tremblay, Burkard Schafer, Scott Wortley, Xavier Beauchamp-Tremblay, and Analise Hofmann for their helpful comments in writing this essay.
INTRODUCTION
There has been limited quantitative research into how people experience legal problems and conflicts in regions across Canada. This is starting to change as data-driven insights become more integral to policy and program development, such as Justice Canada’s Gender-based Analysis Plus program, which is designed to ensure that intersectional considerations are integrated into departmental initiatives through staff training to ensure they incorporate evidence-based approaches in their work.[1] Governments are also making more content available as open data, and the Canadian Legal Problems Survey (CLPS) is the source of one such dataset. The survey results contain significant information on how common legal problems were across Canada in the three years leading up to the survey, how people addressed these problems, and how satisfied they were with the results. One aspect of the data that is of significant interest is the relative rates at which people reported experiencing legal problems and disputes in different regions. This data shows that Quebecers were 18% less likely to report experiencing serious legal problems or disputes than Canadians outside Quebec. Quebec’s demographic attributes do not show clear patterns to indicate that the lower rates of legal problems being reported there are correlated with those found in other Canadian regions, which implies there are deeper differences that cannot be connected to these societal characteristics.
1. DATASET
The CLPS was carried out by Statistics Canada in 2021 at the direction of Justice Canada, and a microdata file for public use and analysis was published in 2022.[2] This allows for analysis of the individual responses. The survey collected data from 42,400 people across Canada. This included 29,972 people from the general population and an oversample of 12,428 Indigenous people. The microdata file reports on the data relating to the three largest provinces separately and then groups together smaller provinces, which divides respondents into five regions: Atlantic, Quebec, Ontario, Prairies, and British Columbia. The survey was not conducted in the territories, so there is no data available in this data set on Northerners’ experiences.[3] The data from approximately 21,000 respondents is included in the microdata file, and each individual is provided with a weighting value to allow for extrapolation to the population based on demographic attributes.[4] This survey gives researchers the ability to identify and examine trends across Canada and provides grounds for comparisons between different groups of people and how they report experiencing legal problems and disputes.
For the purposes of the survey, Statistics Canada used a subjective definition of “legal problems and disputes.” Figure 1 shows the structure of how these questions were asked. This means that survey participants had the flexibility to define legal problems and disputes in their own ways. This follows Hazel Genn’s concept of justiciable events, which she defines as “problems for which a legal remedy exists.” (GENN & BEINART, 1999, p.5) By leaving the definition of legal problems open to interpretation, the survey designers can collect information about events in respondents’ lives that they may not identify as legal in nature. This has been found to be a preferable method over researching only issues that are addressed by lawyers, or which involve courts and tribunals, because many people do not know about or choose to take these kinds of approaches, which leads to under-reporting the impact of these issues (CURRIE, 2016). However, this subjectiveness means that the survey results are not able to report whether individuals actually experienced legal problems: as is the case with any data collection that relies on self-reporting, it can be expected that there are elements of both over- and under-reporting in respondents’ responses.
Figure 1: A screenshot of the Canadian Legal Problems Survey questionnaire showing the structure of the questions about respondents’ legal problems[5].
2. METHODOLOGY
For this research, the rates of problems in individual regions were equalized by population and compared to provide better insights into the experiences of people across Canada instead of using the absolute number of problems across regions. As Figure 2 shows, the relative sizes of the regions mean that simple analysis by number of people is highly affected by population, which is dominated by Ontario, so comparisons of the number of legal problems are misleading when trying to elucidate people’s experiences in different parts of the country. Regional attributes are more predictive of how individuals’ legal problems are likely to affect their lives. It should be noted that the demographic model used is intentionally simplistic. A model can be easier to understand and apply to the underlying complexities on which it is based: “Sometimes those simplifications do not matter, or do not matter much. The model gets it close enough.” (GODDARD, 2022, p. 38)
Figure 2: Comparison of the number of people reporting legal problems in Canadian regions against the frequency of residents reporting legal problems.
This essay uses linear regression modelling to establish baselines for how legal problems correlate with demographic characteristics in different regions and create projections of what levels of legal problems could be in line with these variables. This allows comparison of the projected and actual values to establish what levels would otherwise be expected and what can be attributed to conditions specific to the Quebec context, such as the Civil law system, government, culture, and a more robust welfare state.
3. FINDINGS
3.1 PREVALENCE OF PROBLEMS
The relative occurrence of legal problems reported in Quebec compared to the average among Canadian regions points to important differences in the ways Quebecers experience legal problems and disputes. Approaching the data set from this perspective, Figure 3 shows the relative rate of different categories of legal problems in Quebec compared to the average frequency in regions across Canada. The majority of types of problems are less prevalent in Quebec than they are elsewhere. This pattern is particularly pronounced for issues associated with getting disability assistance (-61%), debt or money owed (-51%), immigration (-47%), wills (-47%), and getting government assistance (-42%). The only exceptions to this pattern are harassment (+18%), child custody (+12%), family breakdown (+11%), and large purchases or services (+10%). Some of this difference may be linked with different governmental institutions and obligations, especially in the categories of getting disability and government assistance. Quebec also provides different levels of legal protection for people in familial relationships, which may contribute to the increased rate of problems arising from family breakdown (LECKEY, 2024), but other patterns are more difficult to isolate.
Figure 3: The relative frequency of legal problems reported in Quebec compared to regional averages.
4. DEMOGRAPHIC
To identify patterns between different demographic qualities and legal problems, the proportion of the population in each region identifying as having the following attributes was calculated and graphed:
- Immigrant
- Indigenous
- Visible minority
- Employed within the prior three-year period
- Completed a diploma, degree, or certificate
- Low income[6]
- Disability
- Migrants into the region within the last five years
- Age[7]
The demographic elements that were most closely correlated with rates of legal problems relate to cultural heterogeneity, including the proportion of immigrants (slope = 3.04) and the proportion of visible minorities (slope = 3.20). The number of people living in rural areas (slope = -2.29) and the number of people with low incomes (slope = -1.52) are also highly correlated, with higher levels of both rurality and low incomes being associated with lower rates of problems. The other demographic attributes did not show a strong correlation with the frequency of legal problems. It is possible that the patterns correlated with immigrants, visible minorities, and rural residents are related, due to immigrants and visible minorities being more likely to live in urban areas.
To look at the patterns in aggregate, these values were then averaged and graphed against the proportion of people who reported having serious legal problems or disputes. Figure 4 shows the results of this comparison of demographic aspects of each region against the percent of residents who report legal problems or disputes over the three years covered by the survey.
Figure 4: Graph of the likelihood of reporting legal problems in regions across Canada against demographic variables.
This analysis showed that Quebec and Atlantic Canada have similar rates of legal problems, but Atlantic Canada is a significant demographic outlier. In contrast, Quebec’s demographic variable is close to the mean, but its rates of problems are the most removed from the model of any region, with 15% lower rates of problems than the model infers it should have. Ontario and Atlantic Canada also reported lower rates of problems at 8% below and 1% below the trendline respectively. In contrast, the Western regions have significantly higher rates of legal problems than the regional average. But while British Columbia has the highest rates of problems in absolute terms, it is closer to the regression model than the Prairie provinces are, with British Columbia being 11% above, while the Prairies are 13% higher than the trendline.
Some aspects of the relationship between demographic patterns and legal problems in Quebec and other regions are clear. For example, the average number of people identifying as immigrants in Quebec is 27% lower than the regional average, which explains some of the lower rates of people reporting problems related to immigration there. However, this does not explain the survey results, as these problems are 47% less common in the province, leaving a significant gap. This difference is also reflected in the responses collected in the Atlantic provinces, which is the region with the lowest rates of immigration, at 81% lower than the regional average, and 66% lower rates of problems associated with immigration. Isolating their responses shows that immigrants in Quebec and Atlantic Canada are both 13% less likely to report legal problems than the average for immigrants across Canadian regions. This may be attributable to characteristics of the people who settle in these regions, or governmental and social aspects such as better institutional support, social integration, or language skills.
The variation between Quebec and other regions for other types of problems is less explicable. These differences may point to legal and governmental systems that better aid people in getting what they need, but more study would be necessary to isolate the underlying patterns. Instead of providing an explanation for the observations, this analysis shows that Quebec’s demographic attributes indicate that the difference is larger than would be expected when compared with other regions.
5. LEGAL SYSTEM
Examining the effect of Quebec’s Civil Law system independent from its institutional and cultural contexts on legal problems reported in the CLPS is not possible given the data available for analysis. The nineteen types of legal problems identified in the survey are impacted by the differences between the Civil Law and the Common Law systems differently. The survey results do not provide a level of detail that would allow the analysis of clear categories of provincial and federal jurisdiction, which could be used to compare how Civil and Common Law traditions affect people’s legal problems and disputes. However, people reporting any of these problems in Quebec are likely to have different experiences from people in other regions, as Quebec has many of its own institutions administering functions such as immigration, police, and prosecution services. Many of these institutions operate in the province in conjunction with similar counterparts at the federal level, and individuals interact with provincial or federal authorities depending on particular situations and relevant laws. These institutional differences are in addition to Quebec’s distinct legal system and culture. Interestingly, Ontario also has provincial institutions carrying out many of these government functions, such as the Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program, the Ontario Provincial Police, and the Ontario Prosecution Service, and it is the other region in Canada with significantly lower rates of problems than the regression model infers it would.
Quebec, like several other mixed jurisdictions, has been described as having separate legal systems for criminal and civil matters (JUNEAU, 2016, p. 813). And Quebecers were 16% less likely to report both being stopped, accused, or arrested, and being a victim or witness to a crime, than the regional average. However, there are important nuances to be considered when assessing the impact of the Common and Civil Law on people’s experiences of problems associated with criminal law in Quebec compared with the rest of Canada, especially in relation to matters that proceed to the courts. The federal Criminal Code (RSC 1985, c C-46) is used in Quebec as part of the common law criminal system, as it is throughout Canada. However, criminal matters that arise from this Code are divided between the Quebec Superior Court, a federal court that is constitutionally protected, and which has Quebec judges, and the Court of Quebec, a provincial court with provincially appointed judges. Penal matters can be heard in Superior Court, the Court of Quebec, and municipal courts, and may arise from both federal and provincial legislations.
It should, however, be remembered that the majority of people who experience legal problems associated with criminal law do not appear in court. The information available in the CLPS data on respondents’ experiences is related to whether they report problems associated with being stopped, accused, or arrested; or being a victim or witness to a crime. A majority of these people did not report contacting a court to resolve their problems (68% for those reporting being stopped, accused, or arrested, and 57% for those reporting being a victim or witness to a crime). There is no data in the survey to indicate whether any of these people were charged, convicted, or received criminal sanctions arising from these problems. The survey respondents who reported these types of problems, but who did not interact with courts, are likely to have engaged with Quebec institutions such as the police. This means that while the treatment of criminal matters in Quebec is not distinct from the rest of Canada, Quebecers’ experiences of the criminal justice system are impacted by the provincial legal system in important ways.
The effects associated with Quebec’s unique history, compared with those in other Canadian regions, are significant influences in how people and authorities approach problems. Meanwhile, the Civil Law and Common Law systems in Canada have been observed to be both converging and diverging in different ways since the nineteenth century (MORIN, 2018, p. 151). In his article “Legal Education as Métissage,” Nicholas Kasirer observed that though there is “a strong tendency, in Quebec and elsewhere, to see mixed legal systems as static bodies of knowledge involving determined sources of law that coexist in an orderly fashion, rather than floundering in a living, dialogic state of flux.” (2003, p. 493) It can be noted that Quebec’s legal culture has been described as having been participating in an ongoing process of acculturation and hybridization between Common and Civil law, and “judges in Quebec continue to rely on jurisprudence, more than in a ‘pure’ civil law jurisdiction, but less than in a ‘pure’ common law jurisdiction.” (JUNEAU, 2016, p. 826-27)
The data does not provide a basis to argue that the civil law system independent from Quebec’s culture and institutions is responsible for the variation observed between Quebec and other regions. While there is no clear pattern to indicate that Quebec’s legal system is a primary driver of these differences independent of the wider context of governance and culture, Jean-François Roberge reported on the actions taken in Quebec to help the province move toward the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals plan 2015-2030, including:
- Redefining the understanding of justice
- Reframing the judicial system as a public service
- Considering judicial and amicable processes to achieve justice equivalent (ROBERGE, 2020, 503)
These strategies may be emblematic of ways of thinking that are conducive to improved outcomes for people in Quebec society when they are confronted with legal problems and conflicts.
6. LANGUAGE AND CULTURE
It is also possible that there are linguistic and other cultural differences, which cause Quebecers to be less likely to report problems and disputes in the survey. Law is culturally defined, and the words that define purely legal concepts are less conducive to translation than words used in more technical fields, because abstract legal concepts are difficult to comprehend across cultures and languages (GUARNERI, 2024, p. 1492). In his article “Custom Made—For a Non-chirographic Critical Legal Pluralism,” Roderick A. MacDonald suggested that a critical approach to law means understanding that “every human being in interaction with others is both law-maker and law-applier — a legal agent.” (2011, p. 310) All these issues may influence the results of a survey of this kind. This could be due to different cultural understandings of what constitutes legal problems or differences in the connotations of the language of the questions asked. Lawrence Rosen discussed the cultural assumptions that underlie the ways people perceive law at length in his book Law as Culture: An Invitation, in which he shares multiple examples of situations where people from different backgrounds make decisions in ways that those from other cultures misunderstand (ROSEN, 2006, 117-18).
Unfortunately, the number of responses for minority languages in each region is too small to report on each type of legal problem, so the overall numbers of Francophone and Anglophone respondents reporting one or more problems in each region were compared. Figure 5 shows how much more or less frequently people identifying as Francophone are to report legal problems or disputes compared with people identifying as Anglophone. This shows a mix of results, with both Francophone and Anglophone respondents being more and less likely to report legal problems in different regions. Francophone Quebecers are 35% more likely to report legal problems than Anglophone Quebecers, whereas French speakers in Atlantic Canada were 36% less likely to report problems. The regional average finds that Francophone people were 4% less likely to report legal problems than Anglophone people overall. From these observations, there is no clear pattern between language and reporting legal problems in this survey, and more research would need to be done to identify whether this is reflective of actual social conditions or an artifact of survey design. There may be cultural aspects to this effect independent of language, but there is no clear way to identify this influence using the survey results shared in the microdata file. The lower rates of problems reported by Francophone people in Atlantic Canada, the Prairies, and BC may be due to the dynamic of being linguistic minorities in regions outside Quebec.
Figure 5 – The relative rates at which Francophone people report legal problems compared to Anglophone people in different regions.
7. TYPES OF PROBLEMS REPORTED AND IMPACT
The impact of the lower rates of legal problems on the population of Quebec is significant. If Quebecers reported similar levels of legal problems as the average across regions, 186K additional people, or 3% of the province’s population, would have to deal with serious legal problems over a three-year period. Figure 6 shows the actual and projected number of legal problems in each category in Quebec.
Figure 6 – The actual number of different types of legal problems reported in Quebec compared with the number expected according to the regional model used in this essay.
Grouping problems by area of law shows that Quebecers are both more and less likely to report some types of problems than others. They are particularly less likely to report issues associated with interacting with the state than the regional average. These include accessing government assistance, disability assistance, and immigration. This may be connected with increased proximity to services since the government of Quebec usually exercises its own jurisdiction, unlike the other provinces and territories. There are also core areas of law which are particularly governed by the Civil Code, which have fewer serious problems arising from them: wills, debts or money owed, and houses, mortgages, or rent. However, Quebecers are also less likely to report problems related to crime and torts, such as poor or incorrect medical treatment, injuries, and serious health issues. In addition, they are less likely to report issues arising from employment, neighbourhood issues, litigation, and discrimination.
However, there are some areas of law where Quebecers are more likely to report experiencing problems. This is most impactful when looking at harassment, which is the most prevalent legal problem Quebecers face, making Quebecers the most likely residents in any region to report it. It should be noted that since the survey was carried out, the Government of Quebec has implemented policy changes to address harassment, such as passing An Act to Prevent and Fight Psychological Harassment and Sexual Violence in the Workplace in 2024.[8] This is also apparent with issues arising from family law — there are more than 10% more of these problems in Quebec than the regional average.
Finally, Quebecers reported more problems linked to consumer law than the regional average. Quebec has the highest protections for consumers of any jurisdiction in Canada, and this may contribute to making these kinds of problems more common there. Marc Lacoursière identified issues with consumer law as a priority for access to justice in Quebec. He observed that the high costs associated with accessing the courts combined with the low dollar value for potential remedies and the frequency of foreign purchases made online may discourage some Quebecers from pursuing recourse for their consumer law issues (2008). More recently, Gabriel-Arnaud Berthold and Vincent Caron proposed a model for how consumer law might be reformed to expand beyond the protection of material interests of consumers to market players, the environment, and society as a whole (2022). This kind of approach might help resolve or avoid disputes that would exist in the existing framework; alternatively, it could expand consumer protections beyond their current limits and significantly increase the number of people in Quebec reporting these issues.
8. IMPLICATIONS
Analysing the negative outcomes respondents self-reported in the CLPS shows that the effect of having so many fewer problems is substantial for Quebecers. This avoids considerable undesirable impacts due to negative effects for people who report these problems, including adverse health, financial, and socio-economic outcomes. This creates significant gains for the community. If the number of legal problems increased to the regional average, the following number of Quebecers could be expected to report new negative impacts:
- 3 thousand more negative health outcomes, such as extreme stress, physical health problems, and mental health problems
- 5 thousand more negative financial challenges, such as borrowing money from friends or relatives, putting expenses on credit cards, borrowing money from banks, spending savings, and missing payments or paying bills late
- 3 thousand more socioeconomic impacts, such as job loss, housing loss, using employment insurance, using social assistance, and making insurance claims.
9. FURTHER RESEARCH
This analysis is intended as an exploration of the results of the CLPS with the goal of identifying correlations between different types of legal problems and different data points that could point to areas for future research. This focuses on what aspects of Quebec society, such as governance, demographics, and the legal system, may be contributing to its divergence from other regions in Canada. This process did not identify clear evidence for particular demographic aspects of Quebec society as sources for the magnitude of this difference, though there is some evidence that rates of people with low income, rurality, immigration, and visible minorities are the community attributes most closely correlated with rates of legal problems. There have been calls to examine legal problems in light of epidemiological approaches in recognition that the law is a part of the societal infrastructure that helps people live well (PILLIAR, 2022, p. 171-98; THOMPSON, CLOUD & GABLE, 2020). It would be interesting to examine the differences among Canadian regions to identify priorities for policy intervention.
Research in law is often framed by particular jurisdictions, and there has been limited research directed at a statistical comparison of regions across Canada. The Everyday Legal Problems in Canada survey and reporting carried out by the Canadian Forum for Civil Justice in 2016 is a notable exception (FARROW ET AL, 2016), though it excludes criminal law problems and used a significantly smaller sample of 3,000 instead of 42,400 in the CLPS. The substantial dissimilarity in rates of problems between Quebec and other regions indicates that there is significant potential for further work to understand these dynamics better. Some of this effect may be attributable to the Civil Code of Québec providing more certainty on interpersonal obligations, but more research would be required to explore what kinds of mechanisms are affecting this and what lessons it might give for administering these programs. It would be interesting to examine particular types of problems with significant differences across regions, such as debts owed, to see if the Civil and Common Law regimes create different perceptions of obligations among individuals.
There are also interesting implications for Quebec’s legal environment. If Quebec’s system of law and governance is conducive to significantly lower rates of legal problems and disputes in society, it may provide useful guidance for other jurisdictions. Legal systems can be conceived as a source of competitive advantage, leading some to go so far as to describe the legal system of the United Kingdom as essentially an export good.[9] This can be compared with the issues associated with Quebec’s legal differences with neighbouring jurisdictions, which may limit commerce and other exchanges. Finding a balance between these priorities while maintaining the existing advantages that Quebecers have in relation to lower levels of problems in the legal system would be valuable. Research to identify specific examples of policies that create regional benefits and friction internally and externally could provide better insights to develop evidence-based policy both within and outside Quebec. It would be of particular interest to examine the different levels of government spending, as this may show opportunities to better invest in programs that have the greatest benefits for communities.
CONCLUSION
Overall, this analysis of the CLPS points to a positive story about Quebecers’ experiences associated with the legal system and disputes and toward a need for further research, as it is not clear what is causing this difference. The significant variance apparent between the rates of reported problems for Quebecers and Canadians living in other regions in relation to certain categories of problems, in particular, indicates that there are many possible avenues for research to better explain these dynamics. Neither demographic analysis nor the Civil Law system entirely explains this divergence, though the outlying values that are most different from the regional averages may be linked with interactions with and operations of government institutions. Future studies should therefore focus on the institutional, cultural, and procedural factors unique to Quebec that may influence how legal problems and disputes are experienced and resolved, with the goal of identifying areas of potential consolidation and models for future reforms.
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[1] DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, GOVERNMENT OF CANADA, 2024, <https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/cp-pm/rpp/2024_2025/supp/gba-acs.html>.
[2] STATISTICS CANADA, 2022, <https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/en/catalogue/35250002>.
[3] STATISTICS CANADA, 2022, <https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/220118/dq220118c-eng.htm>.
[4] STATISTICS CANADA, 2022, <https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/35-25-0002/352500022022001-eng.htm>.
[5] STATISTICS CANADA, 2022, <https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/en/catalogue/35250002>, p. 16.
[6] Defined as being in the income grouping that corresponds to double the low income cut offline for the number of people in the household. The income ranges include the following: less than $35,000, $35,000 to less than $65,000, $65,000 to less than $95,000, $95,000 to less than $125,000, $125,000 or more. (STATISTICS CANADA, <https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/ en/catalogue/35250002>, p. 126; STATISTICS CANADA, 2015, <https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1110023201>).
[7] A binary value for age was created by calculating the number of people aged 35-44 and 65 and over, as these age groups are those that had the largest difference from the mean number of legal problems. The weighted value for reported legal problems in those aged 65 and over is 25% lower than the average value for all age groups, and those aged 35-44 were 18% more likely to report legal problems than the average for age groups.
[8] An Act to prevent and fight psychological harassment and sexual violence in the workplace, SQ 2024 c. 4.
[9] UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD FACULTY OF LAW, <https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/unlocking-potential-artificial-intelligence-english-law>.
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